Dohchay Review

Sudheer Varma directed Swamy Ra Ra earlier. In that movie, he talked about how he brazenly lifted from every movie he liked. In Dohchay, his second feature, he goes a step further. Take the scene in which Manikyam (Posani Krishna Murali) walks into the house of one of his stooges who's stolen money from him. He holds the wife and sister of the stooge hostage, and calls the latter and asks him to come home. And while waiting, they are watching Kshana Kshanam on TV, where a master (Paresh Rawal) who has planned a bank robbery for two months is bitching about how a stooge has stolen it all in two minutes, and Posani is acknowledging empathetically.

Or the scene where Chandu (Naga Chaitanya) watches someone watch the placard holding scene from Love Actually. And someone reminds him that it is the heroine's birthday the same day. In the very next scene, he appears outside the heroine's house holding placards with exact translations of the placards from the scene in Love Actually. So now Sudheer's actually lifting scenes after telling us where he's lifting them from - no question of any of us pointing an accusing finger there!

Apart from these minor inspirations, Dohchay plays out like an inspired version of Swamy Ra Ra. A small conman falling in love with a beautiful girl, chancing upon big money, getting involved in a big stakes game and emerging the winner - the plot is totally familiar. All it does is play out in a different manner. So is it as much fun as Swamy Ra Ra? The answer is an unfortunate no.

Dohchay suffers from convenience - the hero knowing what to do in every situation somehow does not ring true. It would've been more fun if he were cornered and then walked out of that situation rather than the master of the game at every stage. Also, when you show us an entire stunt involving parkour, you should put in more effort than showing long distance shots making it amply clear that it is not the hero doing those stunts. Similar is the case with a bike chase - it goes on for so long and it is so clear that it is a double doing it, that the chase fizzles out.

What Dohchay has going for it are some good comedy sequences and some slick plotting - we do not figure out how the director's going to tie up all ends together. The performances are decent. Naga Chaitanya hasn't improved one bit from his previous outing - meaning he's neither excellent nor terrible. Kriti Sanon's voice is dubbed by Chinmayi, and your mind keeps going Samantha.

Technically Dohchay is top-notch with some good cinematography and decent music that plays along in the background without interrupting the flow of the film. The movie has been wrapped up in a tight budget, but that constraint never shows up on screen - we surely need more producers and directors like these.

Dohchay is an okay one-time watch if you are not too finicky about the movies you watch. And if you are the picky kinds, Uttama Villain is right around the corner.